Actually, all of the Czar’s suspicions were largely confirmed about AF447. Basically, here is a simplification of what occurred.

The plane disappeared off radar, which is natural over the Atlantic Ocean because radar cannot follow the Earth’s curvature, and there is no land there to put in enough radar. All trans-Atlantic pilots know this and expect it.

During this expected radar blackout, a storm appeared over the ocean. With no radar, no one could warn the pilots. Not a problem, though, as the pilots identified the storm on their on-board radar, and decided it was small enough to punch through with a little reduction in airspeed to minimize turbulence to the passengers.

Unfortunately, inside the storm, the pilots were unaware that an even bigger storm appeared behind the first one. A really bad one. When you are inside a storm, as they were, your radar is pretty much solid red—they were unable to see ahead to discover the bigger one, and once again, no ground-based radar could warn them.

To their surprise, they cleared the first storm without incident but ran smack into the second one. The pitot tubes froze up—almost instantly in those conditions—and the plane’s computer lost all sense of air speed. When this occurs, the plane’s autopilot switches off with a loud alarm. The plane, already at lower thrust, could not maintain airspeed and began to stall, producing an additional alarm.

The Air France pilots were commercial pilots well-trained and experienced on this aircraft; however, they lacked prior civilian or military flight experience, and had no experience flying non-Airbus equipment. They did not do what pilots do in this situation: dip the plane down and increase thrust to counter the stall. Had they done so, the plane would have regained power and they could have climbed back up fast over the severe turbulence.

The reason they did not know this is because Airbus pilots depends extensively on the planes’ advanced computer system. As the Mandarin will tell you frequently, most pilots these days do little flying: the planes do all the work, and the pilots are there only in case something goes wrong.

On Flight 447, something did go wrong, and the pilots did not remember what to do in time. In fact, almost a minute may have gone by before one of them remembered to increase thrust. In that time, the plane went nose down in a stall, and began to bank to the left.

The pilots, distracted by the series of alarms of increasing intensity, the turbulence, the outer darkness offset by blinding flashes of lighting, and the sensation of turning, evidently did not realize the plane was nosing down in the stall. Without the flight computer, neither apparently remembered to look at the artificial horizon gauge, either. So when they jammed the thrust levers forward, they did not realize they gunned the engines while the planes was pointing downward. They must have realized too late that they aimed the plane into the ocean. When they did, and pulled back to turn the plane up, they succeeded in leveling the plane a split-second before it hit the water.

The plane burst apart on contact, and all were killed.

So, was the Czar wrong on one detail…? You know, where the Czar said the French would cover this up? After all, the evidence all adds up as the Czar predicted, so where was the cover up?

Alas, no—the Czar is right so far. Because neither Air France nor the BEA revealed this information. The thunderstorm information was captured by a weather satellite; when the plane’s positional data from its satellite-based maintenance system was overlaid on the weather map, it became nauseatingly clear that the plane passed through one minor thunderstorm only to fly into the teeth of a massive storm; the plane was down within minutes after this. Temperatures were so cold at the known altitude that the pitot tubes would clog with ice in under a second. The rest of the information comes not from the still-missing flight recorder, but from the same maintenance report that indicated the sequence of events, as well as non-French analysis of photographs of plane wreckage.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.